


Epiphany

by Fabrisse



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lincoln thinks about Olivia, the one he's cared about for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epiphany

**Author's Note:**

  * For [centuries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/centuries/gifts).



> This is red universe.

He should have known.

Olivia had been different. It wasn't just things like the gun battle in the Esso station. Hell, this was Fringe Division; incidents like that were nearly normal. But Olivia, his Olivia, the one Charlie had been teasing him about for years, had been different and he'd just accepted it.

Olivia was smart -- smarter than Charlie, although from their double act sometimes, people wouldn't think so. (Charlie was good on emotions. He picked up things from people and those emotional bits would tie into Lincoln's intellectual bits and somehow, with Olivia there, the three of them would reach a conclusion.) But if he were looking at things honestly, Olivia wasn't smarter than he was. And on certain cases, like that Candyman case, suddenly she was. She was reading patterns like Astrid, reading people like Charlie, reading the scene like he did. He'd thought it was boredom while Frank was gone, or maybe her little incident from before had awakened her ambitions. Lincoln had never thought it was because she wasn't Olivia.

His Olivia -- the girl who dyed her hair red because she liked Hitchcock comedies and wanted to be the heroine, the woman who smiled easily and missed her sister and was so deeply in love with Frank -- she hadn't really been there. Lincoln had thought maybe she wasn't mentioning Frank because she was worried about him. Part of him had hoped it was because they were coming to a logical end for their relationship, and part of him had feared it was because she was being kind to a colleague who cared for her.

But what really broke his heart, was that when the real one came back to them, she was different. The undercover assignment had hurt her. Had she known she was pregnant? Lincoln couldn't pretend that he'd ever really liked Frank (not that he'd _disliked_ him, he just hadn't seemed enough somehow), but the heartbreak on his face when Olivia came up pregnant hadn't been fair to anyone. Olivia had done a job -- and Lincoln was pretty sure that she'd done it well enough to fall a little in love with Peter Bishop -- and it had ruined everything for her. Somehow, he'd understood that even when she first returned, even as his conscious mind was putting it down to the fact that Broyles was missing and Lincoln was now in charge.

Olivia's smiles were less frequent now, less genuine, unless her baby were involved. She didn't banter with Charlie or flirt with Lincoln's crush.

Lincoln sat with Charlie at a bar. They'd just come from seeing Olivia and the baby. They'd told her that they knew about her time on the other side and asked her what it was like. Her only reply was, "I miss the coffee," said with a wistful smile.

In that moment, he knew. Lincoln knew that Broyles was dead and Fringe Division -- their universe, not the people with the coffee -- was responsible. He knew that Olivia had been in love with Frank and had made the choice to use her body as a pawn in the inter-universe war.

Lincoln Lee could forgive Secretary Bishop for many things. The man had lost a son to another universe. His grief and his bravery were both legendary. He could be forgiven for the amber which kept their universe safe and for the lies he told to preserve their way of life.

Not once had Lincoln questioned whether being part of Fringe Division was right. Now it was all he could do.

Because betrayal is unforgivable, and Secretary Bishop had betrayed everyone when he'd given them an ersatz Olivia and passed her off as real. He'd betrayed the trust the team had in each other. He'd betrayed Olivia into loving his son and falsifying her feelings for Frank. And he'd forced Lincoln to betray his love for Olivia.

The smiles and trust weren't freely given anymore. They couldn't be. Because Lincoln? He should have known.

**Author's Note:**

> centuries Fringe fandom request came up as a "Random Unfilled Prompt of the Day" on April 12. She wanted Fauxlivia, and this is an outside looking in at her.


End file.
